Here's this article by John Zmirak attempting to analyze why people have such a mania for conspiracy theories. He focuses on Opus Dei, who, if you are gullible enough, are alleged to be snaking their sinister tentacles around everything from politics to oenology.
Excerpt:
If there’s one thing that makes people happier than finding a forgotten
bottle in the cupboard or a six pack in the fridge, it’s finding out
that world events are dominated by an evil conspiracy. It’s hard to
explain why such a discovery proves so consoling, but it does: Some 35
million people shelled out cold, hard cash to buy The DaVinci Code—most
of them Christians, eager to read a tale which portrayed their entire
religion as a scam cooked up by a Roman emperor and perpetuated by a
spectral order of murderous, albino monks. Clearly, they were not
picking up this book because it depressed them. Such books give readers
the free and easy feeling that they needn’t lift a finger to change the
world—it’s all so futile anyway. (“What can you and I hope to do,
against the likes of… Them? So let’s go rent Jackass again.”)
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